


a toast to those who won

by Snowsheba



Series: gency week [5]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, and can also zoom over to those souls, the idea is that mercy can see souls because she can see where her teammates have died in game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-05
Updated: 2017-07-05
Packaged: 2018-11-28 06:41:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11412381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snowsheba/pseuds/Snowsheba
Summary: They’re fey little things, souls are.





	a toast to those who won

**Author's Note:**

> today's prompt was **ultimate**.

Angela has always been able to see souls.

They’re fey little things, souls are. Glimpses into a world she cannot reach, golden yellow and wispy, bright and glowing and beautiful. They mist between her fingers when she’s just a young girl and she reaches out to touch them, to hold the fire in her palms, cupping it like a treasure. She’s standing over a dead woman, her parents hurriedly pulling her away before she realizes what she’s seeing, and she doesn’t think much of it until she’s orphaned and alone and she looks out across a battlefield and sees an entire plain covered in glowing yellow.

 _The dead_ , she thinks, almost absently; it’s hard to grasp such concepts of permanence as a child, yet she understands what she sees and she crawls away to retch.

She would have dismissed the whole idea of souls as a childhood whimsicality had it not followed her into school, into adulthood, into Overwatch and beyond. She can’t see the souls of living people, but she can of those who are about to die or have died; the little yellow orbs are a reassurance as much as they are an omen, and she breathes sighs of relief when she sees them retreat back into their mortal shells. It may earn her odd looks, to be staring at the chest of an unconscious person as though her life depended on it, but she needs it – needs to see that her work has had an effect.

* * *

Until one day she realizes: why wait for the soul to slip back inside? What if there was a way to... force it? No, _ease_ it, she thinks with a shake of her head. What if she could coax the soul back into its flesh? Couldn’t she theoretically save more lives?

 _You tread the unnatural path_ , a voice says in her inner ear, and she knows this, but a life is a life and all life is precious – and so she sets to work.

* * *

Nanites, she calls them. Little nanobots that stitch flesh – and soul – together, as best as she is able to discern. Enough of them in one dose and maybe she could perform a miracle, but that’s a dangerous line to walk, a dangerous power to have. _Be responsible_ , she thinks, _with great power_ , and so she keeps her studies to herself and perfects her Caduceus staff instead. No one has to know she might – _might_ – be able to bring back the nearly-dead, and that’s fine with her. There are some things that should always be beyond human control, and she’s more than certain immortality is counted among them.

So she doesn’t write the papers, doesn’t do the studies, doesn’t perform the experiments. She just tweaks her Caduceus staff to as powerful as she can get it without violating the laws of nature, and then she lets it go, even if she can’t save every life she comes across, even if it hurts. Especially if it hurts.

Life is fragile, in the end. To take away that frailty is to take away from the human experience of love and loss. She tells herself this as she helplessly watches a young child die from their wounds, and it’s days like those that she cloisters herself in her office and reminds herself that she cannot play god.

* * *

And then they bring her Genji Shimada, and Commander Reyes looks her in the eye and says, “I know you can save him.”

Her grip tightens on her staff. She is not a good liar, but she tries anyway, letting out a soft sigh and saying, “I will do my best, but I cannot promise anything.”

“Angela,” Commander Reyes says, and she shuts up. He’s technically not her superior officer, and he is her friend, but he isn’t the revered leader of Blackwatch for no reason. “We need him. Save him.”

She glances back at the table where some of her assistants are swarmed around Genji’s body, plugging him into life support systems and stabilizing him, and then returns her gaze to Commander Reyes. His eyes are dark and serious and they give nothing away, and after a moment, she clenches her fingers so tightly her knuckles turn white and gives him a careful nod.

“No one will know,” he says, and she feels sick to her stomach as he shoos her assistants away and leaves her alone in a small room with a body, machines, and a quiet, glowing soul, floating above Genji’s chest.

* * *

She puts her Caduceus staff aside. To do this, she needs her Valkyrie suit, her mind, and her hands, and she carefully situations herself on Genji’s left, his body laid out flat on the table. His soul is still there, tethered by his breathing, and she closes her eyes and places her right hand above his heart, feeling it beat and breathing in time. She can feel the wings of her suit flare out behind her as she lifts her head; even though her closed eyes, she can make out his soul’s glow.

She holds her breath as she reaches out with her left hand. The soul settles into her palm – doesn’t part between her fingers or wisp against her wrist – and she slowly, carefully lowers her hand. She jolts out of her reverie as soon as her left hand makes contact with the remains of his bloodied chest as machines blare around her, briefly, loudly, and she swears vehemently as she flits over to her staff and turns the nanites on his body because he’s _alive_ , against all odds, maybe even conscious, and she’s short of breath and wants to throw up because this –  

He makes a sound, a question, maybe, and Angela’s mind goes blank and all she can say, numbly, is something she will regret for the rest of her life, because she’s just played god and not only that, she’s _won_ :

“Heroes never die.”

* * *

(Genji sees an angel, that terrible day in the medbay when he wakes up to obliterating pain and unknowable wounds, and as a soft yellow glow envelops him, he sees her wings and her halo and asks her what she’s done to him and she calls him a hero.

He’s not a hero, but if his life has given him a guardian angel, he’s not about to push her away.)

**Author's Note:**

> come find me on [tumblr](https://snowsheba.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
